dichotomy

ok, so since i fell asleep so early last night i woke really early this morning. i woke a little bit around 4:30, but managed to fall asleep again. but by 5:30 i was awake and hungry, so i decided that i might as well get up and go to work (for a 7:00 start). at least it meant i got to leave early.

b and i have decided to drive up to ottawa this evening to go to MEC and ikea. we've changed our plans a few times, and most recently we were going to go tomorrow. but when we were chatting this morning, i said to him "do you want to have a free evening at home tonight, or a free day at home tomorrow" and we both agreed that having a free day at home tomorrow is better.

i figure we might as well take advantage of our freedom while we can. speaking of freedom, part of me feels like i've never gotten used to being free - being able to go wherever i want, whenever i want. it was always a novelty to be able to spontaneously do anything. so in a way, i'm not giving up something, but instead reverting to a former, more natural state. that's not to say there won't be times that i feel frustrated. i suppose that will pertain more to pre-planned things rather than spontaneous things.

a few weeks ago, b and i were looking over the wolfe island line-up and concluded that our baby's first music festival will be a good one! we're definitely still planning on going, i've seen babies there loads of times. realistically, we might have to leave on the 9:00 ferry, but we'll give it a shot and see if we might make it to the end!

i got foresight, i can see,
you'll make a cuckold out of me.

it's 9:00.
since it's too early to go to bed (it's still light out), i'm going to take a nap instead.

underwire

i swept our entire house in 10 minutes last night. maybe even less. i don't know for sure. but i'd never done it before, and it turns out it was really easy! usually i just do one room at a time, or brendan does, but it looks and feels nice to have clean floors in every room.

there are challenges to sharing a room/bed with another person. brendan claims that i snore and i claim that he's started hogging the bed (which is TRUE! i wake up squished between him and the edge). the thing about this whole snoring thing is that i'll just be lying in bed silently - not even sleeping, just lying in pre-sleep, and he'll tell me that i'm snoring. i don't know who's crazy here, because i'm NOT snoring, at least not then. he refuses to imitate it or record me when it's happening. hm, highly suspicious.

we've built these wooden miracles

cologne

one of the girls in prenatal class had her baby on the weekend. he was 3 weeks early! quite unusual for a first baby. i woke up this morning from a dream in which i was hoping our baby comes early too. i don't THINK i want our guy to come early, i'll still be working at that time, but at the same time, it's nice thinking we could meet him early.

as part of his job, brendan does a lot of grocery shopping. he buys large quantities of food to feed gathering place guests of approximately 80-90 people, so he's always looking for sale prices and going to national grocers. we've noticed that no frills appears has lower prices than food basics, and i've been contemplating making the switch. yesterday b tells me "licks burgers are on sale at no frills for $4.99". since licks burgers are our favourite, and they're usually $6.99, i decided this was a good opportunity to try out no frills. i stopped at the west-end store on the way home. while i was there i thought about how much joy and i hated that store when it first opened. it was this big yellow box in what used to be a nice undeveloped spot. oh how we resented 'gord and kim'. anyways, i'd give my shopping experience there a 6 out of 10. while it's not a high score, one of the main reasons is because it's unfamiliar to me and it took me longer because i frequently got lost. other strikes against it is that since it's in the west-end i'm more likely to bump into colleagues (one of my favourite parts of living downtown is that i never bump into people i know from work, which helps me maintain a healthy mental distance from my work day), i'm also more likely to bump into people i recognize from highschool. the store is also much bigger than food basics, which is both a pro and a con. the fact that it's bigger means it has more variety and great supply, but it also means it takes much longer to walk from end to end, which eats up my time. no frills seems much more warehousey than food basics, BUT it has PC brand stuff. so basically, i'm pretty undecided at this point.

i've been reading this really great novel lately. it's called "the marriage plot". i first heard of it when i was in berlin and was watching one of two english news channels - the author was a guest on the program and he read a portion from the book. it was so exquisitely beautiful that i was immediately intrigued. i've found it easy to read in long stretches. even when i think to myself "just one more page" i just keep reading. it's nice to have an easy read. it's especially nice reading a novel for a change, since i've been reading other stuff lately. a marriage plot is apparently a type of book - i.e. emma, and sense & sensibility, and the pride & the prejudice, middlemarch, etc etc. you know, back when a lady's only ambition was to get married. i don't exactly know why the author named it that, other than the fact that one of the main characters is an english lit major. anyways, i highly recommend it.

how do i clap with these two hands?

gerbera

you know... i've had a particularly good weekend. can't say why exactly, i've just enjoyed it.

today, andrew, shannon, brendan and i planted our sophomore 'garden of eat-in'. it's turned out really nice, with a nice mix of veggies and flowers. i'm looking forward to seeing to grow and flourish.

planting the garden took significantly less time than prepping and wedding it, which took about 12 hours compared to the 2 hours of planting. one of my favourite parts of being outside in the garden is chatting with our neighbours. it's a nice opportunity to engage with them. i don't suppose we'd ever really chat with them if it wasn't for the garden.

that we might mend our rift from your creation.

square

yesterday afternoon i started feeling super sick and couldn't concentrate because i was nauseous and burning up. i think it was either the alfafa sprouts on my sandwich or my prenatal vitamin. i mostly slept for the rest of the afternoon, pekoe joined me on the bed. since i've been getting overheated a lot lately, especially in my cube, i borrowed a small fan from my mom to keep on my desk and that made a huge difference today.

we had our last prenatal class last night. it was fun. we really enjoyed the whole 7 week program. everyone was quite nice and we'll have a class reunion in august after all the babies are born. when i got home, i added all the girls as friends on facebook. i see the class as a networking opportunity with other women at the same stage as me, and hope that we'll stay in touch. it turns out that one of them is friends with joanne, or at least they're facebook friends. so that's neat! as part of our last session, we had a write a card to ourselves that donna will mail to us 3 weeks after the baby is born. it's interesting writing to my future self. i wonder if i'll appreciate the encouragement or not.

i'm glad that we didn't plant our garden on monday since there was a frost warning last night. our plan is to plant on sunday afternoon. we just need to get the other side of the garden prepped tomorrow. we'd hoped to get that all finished on monday, but it took much longer than we expected. i can't wait til june. for some reason it's feeling a little like may is dragging. i'm looking forward to flipping the calendar.

this puzzle always fits.

miscalculation

with our 3rd wedding anniversary coming up in june, i've been brainstorming ideas. for our first anniversary we went to the cove in westport, and we really liked that. the second year we went to see a play in stratford and stayed with jill. since our anniversary is 2 weeks from our baby's due date, i'd rather stay close-ish to home and westport seems a little far away. initially i'd picked the general wolfe on wolfe island, it's close and we could actually walk there, but it feels like we're away from k-town. but the pictures on the website look like their rooms have not been updated in 20 years, and the trip advisor reviews i read confirm my suspicions that it's pretty basic. so then i came up with the gananoque inn, because i've heard great things about them, and started thinking about getting a 1000 island boat cruise package. but b doesn't want to go to gan, it turns out he has negative associations with that town.

does anyone have any other suggestions? some place nice, local, and reasonably priced??

we've moved the kitty litter box back down to the basement. i tried to do a through cleaning down there and even bleached the floors. hopefully the kitties are back on track with their poop box and will no longer take to creative alternatives.

if there's one thing that irritates me about life, it's when people feel exempt from following procedures, making an effort, contributing to society because they think they're somehow above it. this extends to include when people refuse to recycle or conserve energy because they seem to think their small consumption doesn't impact the big picture. ugh. (i had someone tell me that they would've applied for my job, but were turned off by the whole 'submit a resume' aspect. sheesh! give me a break...)

these things happen all the time.

oil

lately i've been feeling keenly aware of my baby's presence. i've noticed that it no longer feels accurate to say "when the baby comes" because he's already here. he's present and i feel connected to him. i often greet him in the mornings ("good morning to you too!") when i feel him for the first time each day, and sometimes his movements are so silly that it makes me laugh. he's part of my life even though i haven't seen his face. sometimes i have to remind myself that no one else gets to experience him in the way i do and for everyone else they're waiting to meet him and hold him. i'm excited to see his face, and to have his little hand wrap around my finger, but it won't be our beginning because our relationship and connection has already started. everywhere i go, he goes. there's only a few couple of inches between him and the rest of the world. we've already had good times together and i feel like part of me will miss this when he's born.

penny finally accepted our job offer today. phew! she's going to start on june 10.

well i should get started on my tuesday night chores.

you know what your baby's been doing.

vibrate

after working in the yard all day, b and i are pooped. we arrived home again from dinner out, and fell asleep – me while reading on the couch, him straight up napping on the bed. feeling tired from a hard days work is the best kind of tired.

we have the first half of the garden prepped and ready for planting flowers and veggies next weekend. the other half will need to be done on saturday. working out in the garden at 7 months pregnant is a challenge, but i did ok. i was thinking of the last time we worked on the garden – we were preparing it for winter. that was the day we found out we were going to have a baby :)

the ladies at work through me a baby shower on friday at lunch. it was really fun and we were given some nice gifts – mostly things on our limited registry, but some little outfits too. it was very thoughtful of them, and i appreciated it a lot.

i have 6 weeks left of work, but we don't have a new person hired yet. we've offered the job to someone, but she hasn't accepted yet, and i have a feeling she's going to say no. part of me wishes we'd offered the job to someone under-qualified because at least then they'd jump at accepting it and would be so grateful that they'd be willing to overlook the intimidating parts. i hope everything works out.

no hard feelings – no harm done.

recorder

we had our first interview last evening with tandy (the woman from queen's conducting a study on new parents). it was really neat and interesting, she asked good questions. it'll be interesting to see how our opinions and approaches change in the next six months. it turns out we were the first people she interviewed! i'm going to share the study details with our classmates at prenatal class in case they're interested in participating.

over the course of our interview, there were a few re-occurring themes that kept coming up:
• many of our decisions are made through observing others and learning from other people's experiences (mostly through conversations)
• many significant decisions were made naturally without the need to do a lot of research because they fit best with our life-approach (breastfeeding, cloth-diapers)
• we're very frugal people, and undesirable financial expenses have a large impact on our decisions
• brendan and i are very like-minded
• we're compatible because we respect each other - i value/appreciate brendan's simplicity, and he trusts my judgement when i make recommendations (i make recommendations that fit with his desire for simplicity, and he supports my creative ideas)
• we believe in a big picture approach to parenting - making decisions that have long-term benefits rather than just short-term easy/fast solutions
• we tend to be counter-cultural. not that we do it on purpose, but our decisions have to make sense to us, and not be the result of social norms
• we're also keeping our options open, recognizing that we're entering uncharted territory for us, and we don't know how things will unfold (so-and-so is the wildcard!)

all-in-all, it was a positive experience. i think we have a better understanding of ourselves as people, as partners and as parents.

when the right time comes,
i'll be what you've grown to hate.

windy

we built our kitchen shelf unit! i'm very pleased. we worked very well together and assembly went smoothly. we got all the wood cut at rona, so we just had to screw it all together. it's nice having a custom shelf unit, because it will suit our needs perfectly. i've never designed a piece of furniture before. andrew gave us some very helpful coaching, i don't think we could've done it without him. i was telling b that it doesn't quite look like what i imagined, but that's because i see it as a dark brown unit in my head, and it's a light beige in real life. i can't stain it right now, so i'll just have to wait it out or get used to this subtle difference.

while we were at rona, i had a flash of horror when thinking of wood. we decided on spruce. as i sat there waiting for brendan, i got thinking about spruce. what did spruce look like? and i was reminded of the big blue spruce we had on our lawn when i was growing up. i felt momentarily horrified - lumber vegetarianism - and decided it was better to not think about what it used to be :S

melodie connected me with a study at queen's for first time parents. they want to interview us 3 times (1 time pre-baby, 2 times post-baby) about decision-making and what consumer products we've selected. i really like studies, and i'm happy to participate, but it also strikes me funny since we have very few consumer products. apparently melodie told the lady that we'll be an interesting case since our place is small. i'm ok with being the anomaly couple :)

i've started drinking red raspberry leaf tea, i heard about it at prenatal class. the box calls it a 'uterine tonic', saying it helps in child birth preparation. i quite like it. it tastes very rooty or twiggy. the box says to have 3 to 4 cups a day, but i'm a little worried that drinking that much of it might make me go into labour early. so i'm planning on just having one cup a day until i'm 36 weeks, then up my intake.

we've seen your capabilities.

coins

in my quest to maximize our space by making better use of space, i got thinking about under-bed storage. now, the problem i've found with under-bed storage is that it's a bit of a tight squeeze and things tend to get stuck under there. so i thought to myself "there must be a way of raising a bed to make it taller", then did a google search. at first i was looking for new bed legs or something, but i came across these pylon shaped bed raisers that have a square in the top to put the wheels into. this seemed quite ingenious so i ordered them right away (only $10 on amazon!). i was expecting them to arrive on tuesday, but it turns out i accidentally ordered next day delivery and they arrived yesterday. i wasn't sure if i'd manage to lift the bed myself (since b was at work), but i was excited and wanted to surprise brendan, so i worked diligently to lift each corner onto the pylon. and now... our bed is 6" taller! it's awesome! not only do we have ample storage space under our bed, but it seems so much more luxurious! whenever i stay at hotels the beds are way taller than our bed at home. i'm not exactly sure if those beds are unusually high or if ours is just unusually low. i've noticed that now our bed is higher that the bed skirt isn't dragging on the ground but hangs as it was designed to. i'm extremely pleased, especially since it's a bit of a surprise (i wasn't expecting to find such a great solution!). man, i get a great deal of satisfaction from home improvements. i especially enjoy the challenge of a small home.

what i really need to do is be more ruthless with our basement. i have a bad habit of holding onto things just in case they come in handy later - because they usually do eventually! at least upstairs i'm learning to not fill every empty space with something.

it's amazing how draining talking can be. i had the main candidate for my job come in to the office for a bit of a tour, and i just felt pooped afterwards! i needed a few hours of solitude afterwards to hit my energy reset button.

i'm gonna raise the stakes.

AWESOME!

my grandparents lived in england. and every time they came to visit my grandma's ankles would swell up into giant balls. this is one of my most distinct memories of her, because i'd never seen anything like that before. so i'm not really surprised that my ankles are starting to swell, i imagine i have some kind of puffy ankle pre-disposition. i've been told that drinking lots of water helps, so i'll give that a try. for a while there, i was drinking a LOT of water, but now i drink milk and juice, so i'm consuming less water. having puffy ankles aren't uncomfortable, and i don't mind that it looks funny, but i have some special boots that i want to still fit in. you see, i have these boots, i call them 'my birthing boots' because they make squatting very easy and when i wear them i feel like i could squat for a long long time. so for the last few years i've been planning to give birth in them so i can squat. anyways, i've got to keep my feet at a normal size or that won't work.

i had another productive tuesday night. i've decided to reserve tuesday evenings for alone-time at home completing important tasks. last night i installed a second high-shelf in the closet. i'm very pleased it makes the closest more functional and homey. i also spent a great deal of time planning our new shelf-unit for the kitchen. under andrew's tutelage, i've designed a custom shelf unit for our kitchen. after discussing it with andrew we had the basic structure figured out, but i needed to plan how many shelves it would have, and the spacing between them. i'm SUPER excited, it's gonna look so good and be super useful. we're going to build it on saturday. i hope it goes well! it'll be a good team-building project for me and b. sometimes when we build stuff together it can get stressful because i make a lot of assumptions, and b doesn't think like i do. i'm sure it'll be a exercise to help prepare us for the early days of parenting.

in general, i'm really in home-improvement mode. as i mentally prepare to share our space with another person, i've been really intentional about using our space more effectively. and while i'm at it, i've also been addressing other of items that i left as interim solutions. the kitchen shelf unit is one, but another is window coverings. we've had some vertical blinds on the front door since we moved in. they're ok, but not great. we've also had a spring-roller room darkening blind in the bedroom, which always falls down. so today we're having proper custom blinds installed. woo-hoo! it's kind of funny that i'm excited about blinds, but it's going to be a big improvement AND i like accomplishing things. b says i'm nesting, and that might be part of it. but i think true nesting doesn't kick-in until early labour.

you're the only light.

songbook

i have 8 weeks left of work before my maternity leave starts. it's pretty crazy! i have mixed feelings about that. part of me is really looking forward to having an extended break from my work routine (clock-watching, bagged lunches), another part of me is excited to think that in 8 weeks time, we'll be that much closer to meeting our baby, and a third part of me feels reluctant because i'll be leaving a place and space where i feel really comfortable and confident. i know what i'm doing when i'm at work, i know my place and have, over time, carved out a role that is valued and appreciated by others. i'll soon find myself in completely unknown territory, without years of experience to give me confidence, overwhelmed by intense emotions and physical exhaustion, with a tiny little person dictating much of my time. all i can really do, is set my expectations very low, and brace myself for a steep learning curve. thankfully, i know it will get better as the days and weeks go by. we'll find our rhythm and i'll learn a trick or two to keep up my sleeve. i'm a firm believer that the most challenging things in life can also be the most rewarding.

i had a dream about our boy recently. he was a toddler and he had dark brown eyes like me, and wavy shoulder-length hair.

some things they never last.

libre

we think pekoe has diabetes. i didn't even realize that was possible in cats, but we've been noticing a few unusual new behaviours and traits about him lately, and they're all symptoms of feline diabetes. oh, our little koe-koe, he's a good boy. i don't think we'll take him to the vet. we'll just keep watch to see if these symptoms persist, and if they do, we'll change his diet. he doesn't seem to be in pain or discomfort at all, just super thirsty and losing weight. my belief is, that since knowing for sure won't actually change anything (we won't decide to give him insulin injects every day), there's no sense in getting him tested.  interestingly enough, that's something we've talked about at prenatal class with informed decision-making - in regards to getting tests done. if the results won't impact the outcome, then don't bother with the tests. pekoe will live out his natural life, with or without diabetes, in our company. i don't think he'd expect anything else. it seems one key thing we can do is switch him over to a high protein, wet food diet (kibble has more carbohydrates). i'm sure he'll be fine, and that we have many years together ahead of us :)

yesterday was the international day of midwives, and megan arranged a community sing in the park. the song was recorded (video), and will be posted online later. one of the midwives suggested that they record my baby's heartbeat using the doppler and that can be cut into the video. so mico ran to get her doppler and we stood in the park listening to our boy's heart a-beating. it was pretty cool :)

you take the future and leave me with the past.

grain

i had high hopes for accomplishing things tonight, but i just feel wiped and kind overheated. maybe i'm low in iron or something. or maybe it's just that it's friday.

we got the results from our last ultrasound yesterday, and my placenta has moved out of the way, so that's good! good job, placenta!!

i'm so happy that spring has arrived. shannon and i had a visit out at the picnic table yesterday and for a time i sat there alone. it reminded of how much i love the sounds of summer. it's such a tactile season, something for all the senses. i know it's not summer yet, but 21 degrees is actually pretty ideal summer weather. i'm thankful for winter too. it's a tough season, but it makes summer that much better. luckily, my winter jacket made it through the season and i was able to put it away just as it wasn't fitting anymore.

i'm excited to have the whole summer off. i plan to go barefoot as much as i can. i'd also like to get my hands dirty in the garden a lot. if little so-and-so is late, i'll just putter in the garden, pulling weeds and stuff. speaking of our garden, all sorts of random things have sprouted. daffodills and what appears to be tigerlillies. i don't really know where they came from since they didn't exist last year and we didn't plant them. since it was such a late spring, it's shocking that it's almost garden time. our neighbour andrea has a ton of plants already growing from seed. she said she started a while ago. she's a natural gardener, i'm too impressed to be envious.

of all the spring afternoons in bare,
could it have been anybody else.

penicillin

when we were in greece, we took the city bus. i don't usually take city buses in unfamilar cities, because the stops are less clear and the routes seem random. BUT we'd been given very clear instructions from our hotel desk person, and our stop was the very last one. in preparation for the bus, i got the kris kross song "i missed the bus" stuck in my head. when i mentioned that to brendan, i realized that he's too young to know who kris kross is (it sounded weird explaining that they were 13 year old rappers when i was in grade 6, and they always wore their pants backwards). now, don't get me wrong, brendan's age by no means limits his musical knowledge. but random, pop-culture fads, like kris kross, don't usually belong in his mental music library. anyways, i mention this because before greece, i hadn't thought about kris kross in several decades. so i was surprised when i opened google news today to learn that one of the chris's from kris kross had died, and that even at age 34, he was still wearing his pants backwards (although, i was more surprised that this was international news, than the fact that a former child rapper had died from a drug overdose).

as brendan re-strung his guitar last night, i sat by the open window reading random parts of our prenatal class booklet to him. this led to a conversation about our due date. often i remark to people about how i'd like the baby to be born between the 12th and the 20th, and he was concerned that i won't be flexible enough if he doesn't come in that ideal week. truthfully, i mostly mention it since people like to ask us about the baby and pregnancy, and i don't find there's a lot to discuss. "it's a boy, he's getting bigger, i'm doing well..." then i've pretty much run out of things to say, so i talk about the due date or whatever. i KNOW that babies come when they are good and ready, and i know that he'll probably be at least a week late. sure, i have a preference (after nancy can start holidays and before my mom and sister leave town for their summer vacation), but i'm not naive enough to count on it. i suppose sometimes i say things to fill gaps in conversation.

does anyone know a handyman? we have a small job in the attic that needs doing before we get it insulated. apparently its a simple (but dirty) job and would only take about 3 hours. i'd ask andrew, but i don't think he has time. b is busy, plus doesn't like doing stuff like that. i'm pregnant and shannon has other skills. so i think we need an outsider.

in springtime, i was standing.

stutter

i overheard some baby-boomers at work complaining about a possible wind-farm going in down the road from us. they were outraged (and kind of entitled because no one had asked their opinion). i too had been upset to see that a large forested area had been clear-cut, but in part because i assumed they were putting in a subdivision. i feel better about wind-turbines, at least they have a positive impact on society and the wild life can still live in that space. it made me wonder about our opposing perspectives. do the majority of baby-boomers hate wind-turbines (actually, they called them wind-mills) while the majority of my generation (i guess i'm a gen-xer) are pro-turbines? is it that some people (especially older generations) hate change? some claim that wind-turbines are ugly, but people said that about the eiffel tower when it was first built. personally, i can't think of any better use of that space (with the exception of leaving it in it's natural state)

it's not hard to grow,
when you know that you just don't know.

toni braxton hicks

since i made the decision to wrap up my time at KGH (the program coordinator was very supportive and encouraging. she said i'm welcome to come back any time), i found myself with an opportunity to get some much needed work done around the house. brendan still needed the car by 4:15 to go to work in napanee, so i was home by 4:30 and set to work. i had 4 hours before brendan would return.

lately, i've been hearing of a few women painting furniture while pregnant, and i thought "i want to paint too!". i really enjoy painting and i've had a few projects that i've had to leave for brendan or for a later date because i was under the impression i couldn't paint. but after hearing about other pregnant painters, i looked into it and found that latex/arcylic paint is fine because there's almost no fumes and it's water soluble. so last evening i started painting the baby's dresser/cupboard. it was super relaxing. i don't really have any painting close that fit right now, so i just wore an old shirt and no pants. as i painted i listened to damien rice, and found his album to be very soothing and ideal for painting. i should be able to finish up tonight. it looks really nice. i chose an semi-gloss olive green colour, it goes nicely with the rest of our room.

as each coat dried, i also... hung the new curtain rod in our bedroom, cleaned the bathroom thoroughly, did a load of laundry, unpacked from phoenix, washed the dishes and watched an episode of how i met your mother. b was SUPER impressed when he got home. SO impressed that he made me a sandwich :) it felt like a really worthwhile use of my time. i think it helps that i started early and didn't have to stop for supper. i was pretty pooped afterwards. i'm excited about what i might get accomplished tonight :D

i've been wondering... is there a difference between being loving and having feelings of love? like, a person can feel love without behaving in a loving manner, and vise-versa, right?

why do you sing hallelujah
if it means nothing to you.